


A Better Offer

by middy399



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/F, abuse mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 03:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7250866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middy399/pseuds/middy399
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Estaire is far from surprised when her family hires a mercenary to kill her. In fact, she's impressed. Luckily, a mercenary's loyalty is only to coin, and the Archmage happens to have plenty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Better Offer

It had been over two hundred years since someone was hired to kill Estaire, -- at least, as far as she was aware. Two hundred years since the day she woke up in a tavern somewhere in Vvardenfell to a Dark Brotherhood assassin breaking into her room to kill her in her sleep. Two hundred years since she began to establish connections with the Brotherhood to prevent such a ridiculous thing from happening again, knowing she would always have a target on her back no matter what she did.

It seemed that now her streak had ended, but not with the Brotherhood. The Redguard standing before her had no affiliations with any such organisations, Estaire assumed as she watched her walk into the Archmage’s quarters in the middle of the day, shrugging off the heavy robes given to newly admitted students to the College of Winterhold. The Redguard kicked the robes away from her and rolled her shoulders, muscles flexing beneath well-made and cared for leather armor adorned with bright red and orange sashes, a scimitar on each hip. Questions flew through Estaire’s mind as she struggled to choose which to ask first, at the same time memorizing the stranger’s features, the deep brown skin and fiery brown eyes gazing at her, the blue glow of the magelights from the garden in the center of the room emphasizing her rather large nose and the shape of her pulled-back thick dreadlocks.

_How did she get in here? Who is she? How does she plan on carrying this out? Does she really think she’ll be able to kill me? Does she even know who I am?_

A tense moment of silence passed between them, before she finally, firmly, asked perhaps the most important question on her mind.

“Who hired you?”

The Redguard peered at her, eyes narrowed, a twisted smirk forming across her lips. She tilted her head slightly before responding, “Almaril.”

Before Estaire could react, the Redguard thrust her hand towards her, and from it flames shot forth. Estaire’s own hand flashed up in front of her, shimmering with a ward spell that expanded into a shield in front of her. A mage armor spell pulsed from her other hand and through her body as she watched the stream of flames fight against the ward, its heat rivaled by the boiling rage rising inside her.

 _Almaril._ A name she’d heard in passing and read in intercepted Thalmor letters, but a face she’d never seen. Young and foolish, he must be, to think that a hired killer could take her down, yet clever enough to hire someone outside of the typical assassin groups. Something new for her to worry about, then.

Her train of thought was halted by the sound of the flame spell cutting off, and she dropped her ward, replacing the mage armor spell with a conjured sword and bringing it up just in time to parry a scimitar swiping through the remnants of the flames.

“Wait--” Estaire’s plea was cut off as she ducked under another swing, watching the Redguard draw her other sword as she felt the blade slice through the air over her head. The mage thrust her long arms forward, sword vanishing with the motion, a force spell bursting from her hands as she struck her attacker’s abdomen, blasting the Redguard back off her feet with a booming sound that echoed through the room and rattled books and display cases, sending her through the air several feet before skidding across the ground on the other side of the garden, blades scraping across the stone as she held them tightly, coming to a stop at the legs of the enchanting table.

“I don’t want to fight you,” Estaire said, magic surging through one hand as she reached for the alchemy table behind her, grasping for the paralysis poison she had been in the midst of making. The statement was only partly true, -- the mage was always looking for a good fight, -- but she didn’t want to kill this one. Not yet. Her attacker climbed to her feet, gripping her scimitars tightly, her clenched teeth bared in fury.

“Well,” the Redguard growled, rolling her shoulders, blood welling in the scrapes on the exposed parts of her arms and spattering to the ground with the motion, “someone’s gotta die here, and I’d like to get paid. So stand still there and I’ll make it quick.” She shifted herself to pounce, but instead jumped back, bumping into the enchanting table and raising a sword up defensively as the vial of paralysis poison shattered against the wall where her head once was. Estaire kept her arm outstretched, twisting her hand, weaving her magic through her fingers as she felt it tether to the raised blade. She swung her hand out, the blade yanking away from its owner and embedding into the tree in the garden. As the Redguard snapped her head around to grab at her sword, Estaire thrust her other hand forward, releasing a bolt of electricity that struck her attacker’s left hand, the shock sending the blade clattering to the ground as the Redguard recoiled, gripping her wrist in pain.

“We’re on the same side!” Estaire insisted, her magic tethering to the grounded scimitar before pulling it towards her, the blade bringing shards of the glass vial with it as it scraped across the stone. Whether they were actually on the same side was questionable, but the Redguard seemed to at least acknowledge her words, which was good enough for her. She could make them be on the same side.

“Sorry, lady,” the Redguard snarled, glancing behind her and taking a small step back, away from the enchanting table, “but you’re not paying me.” She kept her eyes on the mage and slammed her fist down onto the display case next to her, shattering the glass. As she began to push the glass around, searching, Estaire’s heart lept to her throat, and she felt nauseous as she remembered what the case contained.

_Keening._

“No, but I can! Triple whatever he’s paying you!”

That caught the Redguard’s interest. She froze and raised a brow, her head tilting. All of the fury had drained immediately from her face at the mention of money, and she was already beginning to remove her hand from the display case, which brought a wave of relief over the Altmer. “It’s a pretty hefty price.”

“Must be, if it’s enough to get you to work with the Thalmor and try to kill the Archmage of the College of Winterhold _in_ the College. That, or you’re desperate and it’s a last resort. Whatever it is, I can triple it. And then some.”

The Redguard narrowed her eyes at that, frowning slightly as she straightened up, her hand leaving the display case entirely. “I’ll do a lot of things for money,” she said, beginning to inch her way towards the garden, “but siding with the Thalmor isn’t one of them. I’m here to kill Thalmor. I’m here to kill you, -- and I’d do that for free. The pay is just a bonus.”

Estaire almost laughed, at both the absurd notion that the pay is just a bonus, and the even more ridiculous thought that she could ever be _Thalmor_. Instead, she gave a poorly-stifled incredulous smile and furrowed her brow, lowering her hands. “Who, exactly, did he tell you I was?”

“Estaire Summerseye, he--”

“Let me stop you right there,” Estaire said, raising a hand towards the Redguard. Hearing her name paired with something so despicable after so long made her skin crawl and her heart feel cold. “You know the Summerseyes, yes? How they’re among the most influential, sizable, long-lived, and absolutely _awful_ families in the entire Aldmeri Dominion? How they’ve been a huge voice in the Thalmor for gods know how long? How they would take any opportunity to gain more power across Tamriel, and would absolutely try to take this College for its resources, -- which the Thalmor _has_ tried to do? Surely you’ve heard about the whole mess with Ancano, how he tried to worm the Thalmor’s way into the College and attempted to harness the Eye of Magnus? How I stopped him? If I was a Thalmor, if I was a Summerseye, I wouldn’t have stopped him, and this College wouldn’t even be standing. They will do damn near anything for a good reputation, yes, but they’ll do even more for that sort of power. But the Eye of Magnus is gone, and Ancano is dead, and so are many Thalmor and Summerseyes, by my hand.

“If you ask any Summerseye if I was one of them, they would begrudgingly admit that at one time, I shared their name, that I was born into them. I abandoned that name centuries ago. They destroyed any chance I had at a childhood and a happy life, so I’ve been working for years to destroy theirs. The next to fall will be my _loving_ little brother Almaril, who didn’t abandon the family name, or the family values.” Estaire paused, watching the Redguard, who had made her way over to the garden and had her hand wrapped around the grip of the scimitar embedded in the tree, making no motion to pull it away as she watched the mage with furrowed brows. “Did you not think of why he hired _you_ , a mercenary, of all people? Because whatever he’s paying you is pocket change to what he has, to what the Thalmor and the Summerseyes have, to what he’ll get paid for being responsible for my death. So whether you succeed or fail, he doesn’t lose much, and, because you’re not part of an organisation like the Dark Brotherhood, he doesn’t think he’s at much risk. He hired you because you’re so brazenly confident in your skills that you’re either an idiot who’ll probably die in two seconds, or you’re really as skilled as you believe you are, and for what he considers pocket change, he’ll take that risk. It’s the Summerseye way.

“So I’ll give you a choice, --”

“ _Gods,_ do you ever stop talking?!” the Redguard snarled in frustration, tearing her scimitar from the tree with little effort, leaving a gash in its wake. Estaire hastily raised her hands before her, one reaching out towards the shattered display case. Orange magic weaved its way through her fingers and she felt it tether to the glass of the display, raising the shards into the air, the magelights from the garden faintly blinking off of them as they rotated in place. “Thalmor or not, I might just kill you to get you to shut the hell up!”

“Double whatever he’s paying you,” Estaire said quickly, eyes watching the Redguard’s movements, “and you get to walk away, alive, like none of this ever happened. Triple if you assist me in tracking him down and killing him. Triple the price from my own pocket, plus whatever he has on his body, and you can continue to use the resources the College of Winterhold has to offer.”

The mercenary’s shoulders relaxed, but her grip around the sword remained tight, her eyes piercing into the Archmage. “Why? You’ll analyze why he hired me, so why are _you_ hiring me? From what I can tell, there’s even less risk for you if you hire me to come along, but there’s _no_ risk if you kill me where I stand, or even just report me to the guards -- if you could even manage either of those things after we’re done here.”

She had a point.

Estaire shook her head, fighting the urge to sigh. “You’re not wrong. But I’m willing to bet that you aren’t that stupid. Those are the robes they gave you when you joined the College, yes? Robes that you discarded, because you’re not a mage and you didn’t come here for magic. You didn’t just walk up to the College and try to make up an excuse to see me in private, you joined so that you could walk freely, so that you could examine the grounds and find ways in and out, and figure out everyone’s schedules so you could come in here without being seen, and leave without being suspected. You walked in here with the same confidence you expect to walk out of here with. You’re clever, and you’re experienced. Both of which I admire in a person. Yes, I could just kill you and get you out of my way, but...I’m a generous person, and I know the satisfaction of eliminating a Thalmor and a Summerseye. It would be a pleasure to share that with someone who would appreciate it.”

Estaire could almost see the wheels turning in her head, and she glanced over to the display case. A wave of her hand stilled the shards of glass, and a swirling motion put them together like a puzzle. She lowered her hand, the shards lowering with it into the display case, and they fused together as she curled her hand into a fist, once again sealing the ancient dagger inside. Regardless of how weak Keening had become, she wasn’t about to risk someone’s instant death upon touching it, not since Arniel Gane disappeared when striking the blade against a soul gem. That was difficult to explain to the others at the College.

“Do you always talk that much?” the Redguard asked, drawing Estaire’s gaze as she lowered her hands. “I’m not sure if triple is enough to deal with you.”

“I could have stayed silent and just killed you--”

“Just answer the question. It’s simple. Yes or no.”

Estaire rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “No.” A slight lie.

“Triple it is, then,” the Redguard said, sheathing her sword and approaching Estaire with an outstretched hand. “Koris.”

“Estaire,” the mage took her hand and shook it, noting the warmth of her palm, “without the Summerseye.” Her other hand opened towards the ground, and the other scimitar shot up, the hilt tilted towards Koris, who eyed it warily for a moment before grabbing it and returning it to its sheathe.

“So tensions in your family are high?” Koris inquired, turning to gather her robes from the floor, stepping carefully around the shards of the shattered vial across the stone.

“You could say that,” Estaire replied, a small smirk forming on her lips. “Just give me a moment to gather my things and inform my apprentice that I’m going to be absent, and then we’ll get on the road and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Forget I asked.”


End file.
